The Night Watch
by lena1987
Summary: Of silver girls and worn-out men. Lavender Brown/Severus Snape. AU. Written for the lovely gelsey, on the rarepair shorts community on LJ.
Author: lena1987

Title: The Night Watch

Pairing: Lavender Brown/Severus Snape.

Rating: T.

Summary: Of silver girls and worn-out men.

 _Written for the lovely gelsey, on the rarepair_shorts community on LJ. Beta'd by AdelaideArcher._

* * *

 **The Night Watch**

He first saw the girl perched atop of the vacant Headmaster's chair. Her figure cast a silvery light over the ornate piece of furniture. Her body was hunched over, her face was covered by trembling hands, and she was weeping. Perchance another man might have offered condolences, or a half-hearted attempt at wisdom. Standing a few feet behind her, he could have even murmured something soothing. Instead, Professor Snape curled his lip.

"You," he declared, voice barely above a harsh whisper, "are making a racket. Desist, girl, or get out of the Hall."

The stupid thing gave a blubbery sounding sob. He winced, feeling as if all of his senses were protesting against the god-awful sound. Her weeping intensified; now her shoulders were shaking, and the shrillness of her wailing washed over him like a shroud of cold, black dread.

"Girl!" he barked. "Enough! Cease and desist, this _instant!_ "

Snape hadn't been aiming for any reaction other than blessed quietness, but Merlin, did he receive one.

"Bugger off, you sour old git!" the girl shrieked, burying her face again. Snape blinked.

"I shall _not_ ," he thundered, ineffectively wiping a droplet of blood away from his chin. "Away with you! I shall call the Baron and then where will you be?"

The ghost, he noticed then, had a hair of unruly ringlets that fell every which way. She hadn't moved, though, and he still couldn't see her face well enough to know how to best direct his ire. She sniffed wetly and let loose with one hysterical giggle.

"Why," said the newly revealed Lavender Brown, turning to him with one sarcastic eyebrow arched, "I'll be in the same place as you, _Professor._ Stuck here, with no hope of ever leaving this horrid, horrid place! Now… now… sod off!"

He opened his mouth to retort, but she was already gone, disappearing through the closest wall. He stared at the stone for longer than he cared to admit, then glanced down at his own silver, bloodied robes.

"Touché, Miss Brown."

…

The Professor met Miss Brown again in the darkest hour of the night. She was outside of the portrait to enter the Gryffindor tower, her back to the wall, her backside on the floor. She cut a tiny figure; her eyes were fixed on the snoozing old woman. He watched her from afar, thinking of a time long ago when he had sat in that very place, his eyes on that very woman, his arse on that very cold spot of stone.

She must have sensed him, for her gaze flickered towards him before it returned to studying the portrait. "Go away."

Snape rubbed his neck with the sleeve of his robe, disgruntled with the ever present wetness. "No."

" _Why?_ "

"I have no other pressing engagements at the moment."

"Bully for me," she sneered, scrubbing at her face. He narrowed his silver eyes and, for the first time, took note of her body. Clad in a tattered uniform, Miss Brown's shirt was slashed through, seeping silver blood glistening on the bare skin underneath. Somehow he knew that if she leaned forward, her back would be ripped to shreds. Indeed, when she pushed herself up with an exhausted huff, there was a moist, slick sound as the blood followed her.

She glided towards him, arms outstretched. "Well?" she cried, twirling in the air. "What do you see when you stare so, Professor? An awful sight, isn't it?"

 _She looks like a ballerina,_ he thought vaguely, though most things were vague now. Miss Brown paused, shooting him a curious look. "Do I?"

 _Ah._ "I spoke aloud?"

"You did."

"So I did."

"What?" asked the girl, clearly lost.

"How long have you been here?" Snape enquired, lacing his fingers together behind his back. He recalled that she was once a flippant, pretty little thing.

She snickered as her fingers flitted over her hair, a movement so natural that he considered he might be seeing water flowing over her back in rivulets. It was blood, he decided eventually. All of that blood again. "'Come here often?'" she whispered back, tittering.

Flummoxed, he adjusted his soaked collar. "What?"

"Oh," she sighed, "nothing. Nostalgia, perhaps."

"I've plenty of that," offered Snape, his hand sweeping through the dark with absentminded flair.

"Do you?" She spun around again until she was at his side. "You talk more than… well, than _usual._ "

He found himself confessing, "I've always been… loquacious."

Miss Brown tilted her head, measuring him up. "Have you? That's quite a surprise. Never quite took you for a babbler."

"Not a _babbler,_ Miss Brown," he corrected silkily. "The term loquacious refers to—"

Batting a hand in the air, the girl-ghost smiled faintly. Snape thought that his stomach might've flipped, if he had one to begin with. "I know what it means."

"Then w—"

"Your voice is lovely. I like the way it sounds when you say such things." Then, because his mouth had dropped open like a gaping fish out of water, she said bitterly, "You put me under _crucio_ once. And now we're chatting about verbosity. Isn't that peculiar?"

He could only offer her a slow, awkward shrug. "It is indeed."

…

"How old are you?"

"Wrong. How old _was_ I."

"We are conversing; we are alive, in our own way," he grumbled as he practiced commanding his ghost-legs to stride a ghost-stride. Miss Brown merely chortled while he glided up and down the dungeon hallway, all efforts to resume his former impressive method of walking staying unfulfilled. "Ergo…" he continued, whipping around and heading back down the corridor again, legs flying under him—she was laughing harder now— "…it is sufficient to refer to your current age."

"That's quite flattering, you know. Do you talk like this to all the ghosts?"

"Oh, aye," he said sarcastically.

"You're still gliding. You look like you're on a Treadmill."

Snape paused, befuddled. "A what?"

Her eyes, bright as they were, managed to light up even more. "I'll take you," she breathed. "I know just the place!"

…

"The Room of Requirement responds to the wishes of ghosts?"

They passed through the wall, arriving in a room full of strange looking equipment. The girl was ecstatic; she flew around the inner walls for a moment, giggling, before she came to a stop before him. "I had no idea!" she exclaimed. "And now… oh, the possibilities!"

Snape glowered as he lowered himself to the floor. He couldn't quite feel the mats under him, but there was enough sensation to be able to arrange his limbs into a sitting position.

"This is a _gym_ ," Miss Brown said, shaking off silvery blood that had collected all over again near her shoulders. It looked like the girl had twin pools on her shoulders. He watched as they filled with liquid again, all so the blood would splash around her when she moved. She'd developed a habit of spinning like a whirling _dervish,_ silver blood raining down on terrified students. He wondered when she'd become so odd.

"Parvati's mother had one," she was saying. "Or has one. I don't know."

"Don't you see her anymore?"

"Parvati? Not for a while now. You asked me how old I am," she reminded him, coming to sit beside him when she saw that he was unimpressed with the sweaty smelling Muggle room.

"Yes."

"I think," she announced, looking at him carefully, "that I am eighteen, and nine hundred and thirty seven days."

"That's just a flowery way of saying—"

"I like flowers," she interjected. "And I think you should call me Lavender."

…

On a much later day, when he'd perfected his powerful stride, he told her that he was thirty eight and one thousand and twenty one days.

"You may," he said gruffly, "call me Severus."

Her answering beam made the second-years below them shield their eyes.

…

On another night when all of the students were in bed and the flames of the candles were dim, Lavender said something that pushed him away for thirty three days.

"I'd like to try something," she whispered. They were in an empty classroom; he stood beside his old desk, and she was dangling her legs from the bench in the front row. Five months and seven days previous, Severus had discovered that she had three tiny plaits interspersed through her matted curls.

"Convince me," he offered. She was shy, her cheeks glowing just a little bit more than her form. Intrigued, Severus gestured at her impatiently.

Lavender slid off the bench and walked her dainty ghost-walk. She came to a stop a hair's breadth away from his body. He couldn't breathe, and he'd never hated it more than at that moment.

She looked up at him and whispered, "I think we should try touching. That's—that's the one thing we've never—we've never done that. Touching. We've never tried it."

He stared at the girl. Finally, poisonously, he hissed, " _Piss off_."

He left her there, weeping again, in his former classroom that he knew now that he'd not be able to visit without thinking of her. He despised her for it—for shoving herself into his life, this shite-filled façade of a life. If he'd been alive, breathing, _free_ , he'd never have been saddled with such a stupid, air-for-brains creature.

…

On the fourteenth day without Miss Brown, he overheard a group of third-years shrieking with laughter about Lamenting Lavender.

…

On day twenty four, Severus thought that it might have been nice to be breathing as he held a warm, solid woman in his arms.

If she was young, too young, and fair-haired and a gods-damned chatterbox, then who would really mind, in the end?

…

The day after that, he floated above the Shrieking Shack and thought that this _was_ the end. This was _his_ end. And _hers_ , too.

It came to him then that he was marvellously lucky to not be stuck to the Shack; he could dawdle from there to Hogwarts in the same straightforward direction that he'd used to get there so many years ago, when his heart had been beating and his blood had been _in_ him and red, not _on_ him and silver.

What if he'd been stuck there, with no-one?

…

She was crying again. He sighed. "Stop it."

"I can't."

"Please," he said softly. "You should stop crying."

"Why? Have I got a reputation?" The laugh that accompanied that was pained and shrill.

"Of a sort."

"Oh. You're telling the truth."

He gave her a wry, sideways smile and she gifted him with a gasp of pleasure that had never spilled from a woman's lips in his presence before.

"I like it when you smile. I like it ever so much."

Severus cast around for words and found none. He muttered, "Do it," and watched with apprehension as she immediately understood and began to fumble around in the pockets of her skirt.

She slid closer to him in the air; they were bobbing together near the charmed ceiling of the Great Hall. The moon was bright in the night sky.

"Here," whispered Lavender, holding something close to his neck. "Look at me."

He saw the embroidered handkerchief and arched his neck. When he felt the delicate fabric touch his wet skin, a raw, broken sob fell from his mouth. "Oh," he whispered, for she had wiped the blood from his skin. He felt clean and dry and overwhelmed. "Nothing I've done has ever…"

"I know," she murmured, biting down on her lip. "I've asked around. It seems that we can help each other. Not… not on our own."

He found himself almost stricken by the revelation. With no heart that thrummed like a hummingbird's wings, Severus lifted one finger and pressed it gently to her cheek; her flesh was warm and silk-like. She sighed heavily and he closed his eyes, entranced by the _feel_ of her skin.

"More," she said. When his eyes opened, he saw that she was smiling.

* * *

 _fin._


End file.
